Unit VI: East Asia

Unit Summary

After a long period of disunity, the Sui (589-618) and Tang dynasties (618-907) reunited China. The Tang rulers rebuilt a government modeled on the Han dynasty. Scholar-officials, trained in Confucianism, advised the emperor and administered the empire. Confucian principles specified that government should operate as a strict hierarchy of authority from the emperor, who enjoyed the “Mandate of Heaven” as long as he ruled justly, down to the local village official. The Tang had an active foreign policy and spread their influence along the Silk Road to the west, as far as the border of the Abbasid Caliphate. The two empires fought a battle in Central Asia in 751, from which the Chinese retreated. The Tang dynasty extended influence and cultural pressure on Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.

The Song dynasty took over in 960. The Song supervised strong cultural and economic growth, with magnificent cities and cultural productions. The Song instituted an official examination system for scholar-officials, which gave China a civil service bureaucracy many centuries before any other state. China had the strongest and most centralized government in the world. However, the Song struggled militarily against nomadic tribes from the north. One group of nomads overran the Northern Song region and captured the emperor. Survivors of the Song imperial family maintained the Southern Song Empire from 1126 to 1260, when they fell to the Mongols. Under the pressure from the loss of the north to “barbarians,” the Southern Song emphasized the superiority of Chinese traditions. Despite these military problems, China became Afroeurasia’s major economic powerhouse in this period, due to the medieval economic revolution.

Around the year 1000 in Afro-Eurasia, technological innovations in agriculture caused massive increases in productivity, population growth, settlement of new lands, and a great expansion of manufacturing, trade, and urbanization. The agricultural revolution between the Tang and Song dynasties made China the center of industry, as it produced new inventions and luxury products desired throughout Afro-Eurasia. Innovations spurred a huge expansion of agriculture in Europe, cultivation of new lands, expansion of trade, and a rebirth of manufacturing, trade, urban culture, and education. Networks of commercial, technological and cultural exchange covered most of Afro-Eurasia. In the center, the Muslim world (now divided into many states) and India prospered as producers of goods such as cotton cloth, spices, and swords, and also as middlemen along the east-west trade routes. While people rarely traveled from Spain to China, products, technologies, and ideas did. From 1200 to 1490, those networks grew stronger, busier, and tighter.

There are many factors that contributed to the Chinese economic revolution that occurred between the seventh and thirteenth centuries. The factors of population growth, expansion of agriculture, urbanization, spread of manufacturing, and technological innovation were both causes and effects of the economic revolution, as each factor intensified the effects of the others. The economic revolution began with the introduction (from Vietnam) of champa rice, a variety that produces two crops per year. Farmers migrated to the Yangzi River valley to take advantage of the increased yield, and the population grew rapidly. Chinese laborers and merchants extended the empire’s system of canals connecting navigable rivers to about 30,000 miles. The system was financed by state taxes on trade, and led to even more trade. Blast furnaces quadrupled the output of iron and steel in the eleventh century alone. Availability of steel enabled increased production in other industries. Technicians experimented with gunpowder rockets and bombs. Woodblock printing became a standard industry, and printed books circulated widely. The hundreds of inventions of the Tang and Song eras included the magnetic compass, advanced kilns for firing porcelain, and wheels for spinning silk.

Located on China’s southeast coast, Quanzhou was a primary destination for Arab, Persian, Indian, and Southeast Asian ships carrying merchants eager to buy China’s famed porcelain and silk. Because of its extensive internal economy and technological advances, China exported more than it imported. Although the land route to China was sometimes difficult to travel, shipping to and from the southeast coast meant that China was never isolated from the outside world. China was also the largest and most centralized state in the medieval world, and government regulations of merchants and foreigners were more thorough. As one of the official trade cities of the Chinese empire, Quanzhou had large foreign communities. In this lesson, students compare the accounts of Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, and Zhao Rugua about Quanzhou for their multiple points of view on trade and cultural exchange. They write an essay answering the focus question and citing evidence from the primary sources. Students analyze a concrete example of cross-cultural production in the porcelain vases and flasks made in China for export to the Muslim world and Spain.

In the late twelfth century, nomadic warriors from the steppe and deserts north of China, the Mongol tribes (and other Central Asian nomadic tribes), were united by a charismatic leader, Chinggis (Genghis) Khan, who led them to conquests across Eurasia. At its height, the Mongol Empire was the largest land empire in world history. Mongols were fierce and highly mobile fighters who terrified the people they conquered, even though their numbers were small. Students examine maps of the Mongol conquests and empire, and compare these with the Sites of Encounter in the Medieval World interactive map, which has physical, religious, political and other maps of Afroeurasia. After Chinggis Khan’s death, the Mongol Empire split up into four khanates. Chinggis’ grandson, Hulagu Khan, was ruler of the Il-Khanate. Since the Muslim states were divided, individually they were no match for the Mongol warriors. Hulagu conquered Persia, Syria and part of Anatolia and destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate’s capital of Baghdad. Although some feared that the Mongols would destroy the Muslim world, the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate fought the Mongol army and stopped its advance. Mongols in the Khanate of the Golden Horde overran Russia and attacked Poland and Eastern Europe. The Khanate of the Great Khan went to another grandson, Kubilai Khan, who took over China from the Song dynasty. Kubilai established the Yuan dynasty and kept many Chinese customs, but replaced Confucian scholar-officials with foreign administrators. The Mongols conquered states in Southeast Asia and tried twice to invade Japan in the late thirteenth century, but failed both times. The domination of the Mongols did not last long; three of the four Mongol khanates fell by 100 years after the conquest.

Although the Mongols killed many people and destroyed many cities in its conquest, after the conquest, the Mongols tolerated all religions and protected and promoted trade across Eurasia. Under their protection, the land trade route from China to the Mediterranean re-opened and trade boomed. The Mongols also moved people around throughout their empire, using, for example, Persian and Arab administrators in China, and facilitating the journey of Marco Polo (and many other less famous people) from Venice to China. The increase in interaction also spread Chinese technologies and ideas into the Muslim and Christian worlds.

After the Mongol khanates fell, new states and empires arose. As the Il-Khanate declined, Turkish kingdoms replaced the Mongols. These Turkish warriors originally came from Central Asia, and spread into the Muslim world after their conversion to Islam. Combining dedication to religious ideas with the mounted warrior tradition of Central Asia, they took over the settled Muslim lands. In the west, Turkish armies took over most of Anatolia from the Byzantine Empire (a conquest which set off the Crusades). One of the Turkish leaders, Osman, created the Ottoman Empire in 1326. He and his successors conquered all of Anatolia, Greece, and most of the Balkan peninsula in eastern Europe, before conquering Constantinople in 1453 and bringing the Byzantine Empire to an end. Other Turkish dynasties took over Persia under Safavid rule and parts of the Indian subcontinent under Mughals rule . In China, the native Ming dynasty removed the Mongols and returned the administration of China’s government to Confucian scholar-officials.

In China, Buddhist ideas intermingled with those of Daoism, a Chinese religion emphasizing private spirituality, and Confucianism, the belief system that stressed moral and ethical behavior. At its height in the ninth century, Buddhism had 50,000 monasteries in China. As Confucian scholar-officials and Daoist priests felt threatened by this “foreign religion,” the Tang emperors reversed their earlier acceptance of Buddhism and began to persecute it. One result of this persecution is that Buddhism did not become the official religion of China. Instead, Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist beliefs and practices fused together in China to form a syncretic popular religion, emphasizing moral living, daily ritual, and dedication to family and community.

Under the Tang dynasty, China expanded its trade and cultural influence to Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia. At sites of encounter, these societies adopted and adapted Chinese ideas and institutions and combined those with their own ideas and institutions to build distinct civilizations. This is the adoption and adaptation form of cultural encounter. In the fourth century, three kingdoms emerged to rule the Korean population, and in 676, one of those kingdoms, Silla, unified the whole peninsula. Silla was closely connected to the Tang dynasty of China. Korean elites used Chinese as a written language, but later devised a phonetic script for the Korean language called Hangul. In 936, the Koryo kingdom took over rule in Korea, and adopted a civil service exam system similar to that of China. Korean merchants were engaged in trade with Japan and China, and through those networks, to Indian Ocean and Afroeurasian trade networks as well.

In a similar manner, Japan was influenced by China and Korea, but adapted outside institutions and ideas to fit with its own indigenous culture. Before the sixth century, Japan was an agricultural society ruled by land-holding clan chieftains. Their religion, Shinto, emphasized the influence of the supernatural world and spirits of the ancestors. One clan rose above the others, founded a central state and a dynasty called the Yamato. Those rulers claimed the title of “heavenly sovereign,” or emperor. About 850 CE, the Yamato rulers lost their grip on political affairs, and aristocratic palace families assumed real power. The emperors retained their throne but played mainly a ritual role. The pattern of aristocratic clans warring and succeeding one another as rulers under the sovereignty of a ceremonial but powerless emperor continued into modern times.

Between the third and sixth centuries, when China was politically fragmented, many Chinese and Koreans migrated to Japan in search of refuge or opportunity. Those newcomers introduced many innovations, including advanced metallurgy, writing, silk production, textile manufacture, paper-making, and Buddhism. Japanese tradition links the introduction of Buddhism and beginning of Chinese cultural influence with Prince Shokotu (574-622). China’s immense power under the Tang Dynasty stimulated Japanese interest in Chinese and Korean culture. Literary scholars, officials, and Buddhist monks traveled to Japan. In turn, Japanese intellectuals went west to seek knowledge, learn Confucian statecraft, and acquire Buddhist texts, some made in Korea with some of the earliest known wood-block printing technology. The Japanese gradually adapted Buddhism to fit with older Shinto practices. For example, Shinto nature gods became associated with Buddhist spirits and saints. The Zen school of Buddhism spread widely among laboring men and women.

From about 1000 CE, the Japanese aristocratic class creatively combined Chinese and Korean ideas with Japanese ways to form a new civilization with distinctive institutions, literature, and arts. Japanese officials adopted rules of government derived from imperial China but tailored them to their own smaller population and territory. Scholars developed a writing system that used simplified Chinese characters to represent Japanese sounds. Moreover, several aristocratic women wrote literary works in Japanese. Even though China had a great influence on Japan, Japanese government and society developed in its own direction.

Japan had an emperor, but the emperor and his court had no real power. Clans continued to control regional areas of Japan. Important clans fought each other for more land, power, and control over the weak central government. In the 1180s, the Miramoto clan dominated Japan. They instituted a military government headed by a “great general,” or shogun. The highest social status in the clan and in society went to the samurai, professional fighters. Most samurai were vassals of clan leaders, or daimyo, in a system that was similar to feudal lordship in Christendom at the same time. Samurai were dedicated to a code of courage, honor, and martial skill. To analyze samurai culture, students read The Tale of the Heike and view woodblock prints. The Asia for Educators website has a short excerpt of this story of samurai warfare, and there are many woodblock prints on the Web, although most date from later periods. During those centuries, Japan’s agriculture, population, and urbanization continued to expand. Exchanges with China and Korea grew, as merchants traded luxury goods in return for Japanese silver, copper, timber, and steel swords. By 1300, East Asia was an interconnected region dominated economically and culturally by China.